From the Embers

by Aly Martinez

Eason and I stood in the foyer, crying together for what felt like an eternity. Two people who had lost everything finding solace in familiarity.

“You’ve lost a lot. That kind of hurt sticks with you.

friend.” Her eyes lit up, but then she quicky frowned,

eyes. “You should get new friends. The one you

we were still smoldering in the ashes of that night, a hotspot yet to be discovered, growing brighter even a year after their deaths.

“You’re all I have left, Bree. And dammit, you were his too.”

I was done hurting. Done burning at the stake for a man who had never given a damn about me.

This earned her another hug from my guy. And it earned my guy a breathy moan from my girl. I laughed at both.

you know how you handle this now will have an impact on her life. You are making the hard decisions and carrying that weight so she never has to.

This is all you. Even when people told you to stop and the world quite literally caught fire around us, you kept going. And you did this, Eason. All of this.”

Eight hours later, Ava Grace Maxwell was born looking just like her sisters and completing the family we had forged from the embers—the way it was always supposed to be.